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OPINION

Minor: Corps’ diverted river for La.

Published 10:22 a.m. CT May 28, 2015

The late Mansfield Downes argued the Army Corps of Engineers diverted the natural flow of the Pearl River to favor Louisiana by sending the bulk of water into the man-made West Pearl tributary rather than its East Pearl. It makes the Louisiana side accessible to navigation and leaves Mississippi on dry land.(Photo: U.S. Fish And Wildlife Service)

Mansfield Downes was laid to rest in his native Pearl River County 30 years ago this summer much as the plucky carpenter had lived, in the eye of a hurricane.

His funeral in Picayune had to be delayed for a day because Hurricane Elena was passing through town the day he was to be buried.

When he died of cancer at age 68, Mansfield was still battling as a self-motivated ecologist to restore the boundary between Mississippi and Louisiana to the flow of Pearl River at the time of Mississippi’s statehood.

As Downes had long contended, rightly, the river’s flow had been diverted by the Army Corps of Engineers to favor Louisiana by sending the bulk of water into the man-made West Pearl tributary rather than its East Pearl.

Why is that important? Essentially, it makes the Louisiana side of the river accessible to navigation and leaves Mississippi on dry land, plus the thread of the river into the Gulf of Mexico substantially benefits Louisiana in off-shore oil production and seafood harvesting.

Editor Mark Clinton Davis of the Pearl River County Historical Society’s monthly publication brought Mansfield Downes back to my attention in his May edition which contains Downes’ handwritten manuscript notes recording his on-site inspection trip down the lower Pearl River. The manuscript had somehow come into the possession of Davis’ father after Downes’ death in 1985.

As Editor Davis points out in the PR Historical Reporter, the manuscript not only creates a valuable historical record of the river’s history but also provides insight into Mansfield’s career as a courageous Mississippi conservationist and ecologist.

I had befriended Mansfield way back in the 1970s when I was covering the Legislature. As a one-man gang lobbyist, he fascinated me trying to get lawmakers to amend or repeal a century-old law placing unrealistic limits on what constituted a public stream.

Not one to let somebody else do the heavy lifting for him, Mansfield personally challenged the antique law by rowing a skiff into the waters of Hobolochitto Creek and being arrested for trespassing. The economically powerful H.G. Crosby family of Pearl River County claimed the stream as their private property.

The old law defined a public stream as one that could float a steamboat carrying 200 cotton bales for 30 consecutive days. In effect, that would bar public use of some 90 percent of Mississippi’s streams.

Peal River’s legislative delegation had initially been reluctant to challenge the wealthy Crosbys, but two Pearl River lawmakers, namely then-Sen. Martin Smith and Rep. Lonnie Smith both came to Downes’ rescue and got his bill passed by a single vote.

Downes didn’t stop there — he campaigned successfully against pollution of his beloved Boley Creek by a chemical company, again, as an ordinary citizen battling moneyed interests.

Once, Mansfield talked me into joining him on an outboard motorboat inspection trip down the Pearl River below Bogalusa. We could see firsthand how the diversion of the river’s main course supported his case that the Corps of Engineers had wrongly shifted Mississippi waters into the Louisiana West Pearl. Unfortunately Mansfield died before the U.S. Supreme Court declined to tackle his boundary dispute case.

As I once wrote, Mansfield Downes reminds us of another lowly carpenter who came along 2000 years ago.